


they burned your skin with bloodied ink

by Phoenix_Allura (Artemis_Autumn_Marie)



Series: Nix's Thominho Week 2019 [1]
Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, POV Second Person, Starvation, The Scorch Trials - Freeform, Thominho Week, Thominho Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 08:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19437583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Autumn_Marie/pseuds/Phoenix_Allura
Summary: Thomas has been missing ever since they arrived here.Minho's worried.Thomas has no idea what day it is.Or where he is.





	1. Chapter 1

Minho stumbled into the large room where they were being kept and took an automatic headcount. Everyone was here, except for Thomas. Seeing as Newt had sat up in his sleeping bag when he came in, Minho went to talk to him.  
"Have you seen Thomas?" Minho whispered.  
"He was taken right after you. You've been gone for a couple of days." Minho glanced at the sleeping forms of Group B.  
"Do you think it has anything to do with his tattoo?"  
"I don't bloody know, Minho. You look like you've had a hell of a time, lay down and sleep. They saved Thomas's life in the desert, remember? I doubt they're going to kill him now." Newt hissed, so Minho lay down beside him and stared at the ceiling.  
Days passed. No one knew what to make of it; everyone else had been returned within a week. If they left the room, they got shocked, and no one answered their questions. Minho was beyond worried.

Thomas had lost all sense of time very quickly in his all-white room. His meals didn't come regularly enough to keep track by, and no one ever came in when he was awake. The treadmill in the corner had no doubt been sending his runs to WICKED scientists. They had to have noticed something was off. He got two meals a 'day', if that, and his ribs were starting to show. He wasn't going to last much longer like this.

Minho pressed a hand to his aching head. Everyone had questions, like always, and they couldn't ask them of the WICKED scientists who occasionally hovered around the room, just watching them.  
"It's been three weeks, Newt. At this point, I'm leaning more toward dead than alive." He heard Frypan say, sending sharp pangs of hurt through his heart. He didn't want to think about Thomas being dead, even if it was the most realistic thing at this point.  
"Don't let Minho hear you say that." Aris caught his attention, and he turned to him, blocking out the rest of that particular conversation.

Thomas was done. He'd been here for at least two weeks, likely longer, and his meals had become fewer and farther in between.  
He could hardly stand, let alone run. He lay on the floor, unable to find the energy to even climb up into the hard cot they'd given him for a bed.  
Of course, that was when the door had to open.

Minho woke up throwing fists.  
"Stop that!" Someone hissed; he vaguely recognized the voice. "I've got information about your Thomas. Follow me." Minho struggled to his feet and followed the unnamed voice out into the hallway.  
"He's being brought back tonight. I was told to have someone here to greet him. Stay here, it shouldn't be long." Brought back? Brought back from where? He didn't have to wait long: Someone was stumbling down the hallway toward him.  
"Min...ho?" Thomas's voice was rough, scratchy, like he hadn't spoken in weeks. Minho lunged forward and pulled into a tight hug, feeling bones dig into his arms. Thomas had lost weight, way too much.  
"Shh, I've got you." Minho started leading him into their room. "We'll cuddle tonight, okay, you can sleep for as long as you want. I'll bring you as much food as you want tomorrow." Thomas was still stumbling, hardly even able to hold his own weight, so Minho picked him up and carried him to his sleeping bag. He settled them both in and Thomas curled against his chest. Newt was awake, he knew, but Minho wasn't going to speak to him now. He just held Thomas until they both fell asleep.

"Hey, Thomas, wake up." A gentle voice woke him, familiar in every way. "Frypan has lunch ready. We let you sleep through breakfast." Minho, then. "We don't even have to get up, see, Newt has brought it to us." Thomas blinked up at Minho. He was leaning on Minho's chest in a reclining position. He vaguely remembered meeting Minho the night before. He took the plate from Newt and nearly dropped it. It was heavy, everything piled high.  
"I won't be able to eat all of this. I haven't eaten regularly..." His voice gave out.  
"That's alright. Eat what you can." Minho told him. Thomas ate less than a quarter of what was on the plate before he handed the plate to Minho and gestured to Newt to help him up.  
"I want to walk around." He mouthed to them. Newt nodded, but Minho hesitated.  
"How about you wait until I'm done eating? Then we can walk together." Thomas rolled his eyes but nodded. Minho was overprotective on a good day, and this was certainly not one of those. He wasn't going to admit it, but he didn't really mind.  
"You've been gone for three weeks," Newt told him quietly. "Longest one gone. We were all worried." He glanced at Group B to indicate that they were included.  
"I think I entertained them, or at least gave them something to think about." Thomas winced at the rasp in his voice; it was worse than he'd thought. "They didn't kill me, after all."  
"Okay, stop talking. Here, drink this." Newt pressed a glass of water into his hands, which were shaking just enough for it to be noticeable when he took it. Thomas drank the glass in one go, knowing if he waited he'd spill something. It seemed to fill his stomach to the point of bursting.  
"Eat something more, Thomas," Minho said. "If you can." Thomas took a strawberry, and ate it slowly as Minho finished the rest of the plate.  
"Alright, do you just want to walk around or do you want to go talk to people?"  
"Just walk around. I don't think I'm up to much talking yet." Minoh wrapped an arm around his waist, steadying him on his feet. They walked a couple of laps around the large room, saying hi but not stopping to talk for longer than a few minutes if at all. By the time they were back to their sleeping area, Thomas was exhausted.  
"We're setting you up a double sleeping bag, and working out a way to give you a mattress, too. I didn't say anything because I know you'd both protest, and frankly, Thomas looks like the last thing he needs to be sleeping on the ground." Newt told them. "Minho, maybe you better take Thomas for a bath." Thomas nodded. He was still tired, but he hadn't showered properly in three weeks. Frypan headed them off as they made their way to the bathroom.  
"The tub's a jacuzzi, Thomas, you'll love it." He said, handing over another plate of food, this time covered. "Take your time. Certainly, none of us object, and it gives us time to gossip and see if we can get something out of the guards." Thomas figured that the Gladers didn't object, but with the way some of Group B was glaring at him, he thought it wasn't fair to say that no one objected.  
"They haven't told us anything yet, why would this time be different?" Minho asked.  
"Because now we have Thomas." They finished their walk to the bathroom without any more interruptions, and Thomas grinned at his first sight of a proper bathroom.  
"Yeah, yeah, now get out of your clothes while I start up the tub," Minho told him. Thomas set the plate down. "If you're keen on wearing white again, there is a washing machine in here. If not, they put spare clothes in that drawer." Minho pointed absently. Thomas pulled out a pair of pants not unlike the ones he'd worn in the Glade, a shirt, and, surprisingly, a large sweatshirt. He'd worry about shoes later, he thought as he climbed into the bubble-filled water of the large tub. He was up to his neck in seconds.

Minho didn't get in the tub with Thomas. There was too much of a chance they'd both fall asleep. Instead, he sat on the edge with the plate and tried to get Thomas to eat more.  
"It's one of Fry's cookies, you know how much you like those." Minho pleaded. He felt like he was talking to a fussy toddler. "Please, Thomas, just one. You need to eat." Thomas gave in with a sigh and ate the cookie. From the looks of it, Thomas needed to gain back about thirty pounds. When that would happen, Minho had no idea. They'd have to work him up to three meals a day again first, but Minho had the feeling WICKED wasn't going to give them that time. He helped Thomas wash his hair, and managed to get another cookie into him.  
"Thomas, you're almost asleep, out of the tub and get dressed." Thomas did so slowly, without speaking. How long would it take for him to get his voice back? And when would he stop shaking constantly? What had they done to him? Minho helped Thomas get dressed, noting that the clothing he'd chosen was soft and maybe a size too big (the sweatshirt certainly was, maybe even two). Minho let it go in favor of picking Thomas up gently. Thomas was still clearly out of it, exhausted and malnourished, even if he didn't want to admit it.  
"Did you get him to eat anything more?" Newt asked as Minho set Thomas on their new cot.  
"He ate some cookies. I'm going to wake him up for dinner. He needs the food and he needs to get back to eating three meals a day. I think we're lucky if we get tomorrow. Start packing." WICKED wouldn't have kept them waiting for so long for nothing, and now that Thomas was here, they would be moving quickly. Newt nodded, looking slightly amused. He thought Minho was crazy. Well, maybe he was. But it was better to be prepared than made to leave with nothing but the clothes on their backs. He made sure Thomas was asleep, then went into the bathroom and grabbed most of the spare clothes and towels. They might need them. He continued making preparations, only stopping to eat dinner. When he woke up, Thomas agreed with him, and that brought more people on board. They set up watches for the night as they packed.

Thomas woke up hungry. This wasn't odd, but today he had an appetite. He ate what he could, then insisted on helping Minho and the others pack. They got new sheets every other day, so they saved the old ones to hold clothes and put food in the newer ones. He mostly wrapped up leftover food.  
"I don't think anyone is coming today, Minho." Newt folded his arms across his chest.  
"Newt, these people do weird things. We never know what they're going to do." No one could argue that. So they kept working, even when they would have rather been enjoying themselves. When WICKED told them all to bathe and change into new, much fancier clothes provided for them before lunch, they knew for sure something was up.  
They were seated at several crowded tables, served richer food than any of them could ever remember eating. Thomas worked to eat most of his, sure he would need his strength for what was to come. What he didn't eat, he stowed away in the bags he'd brought with him; they'd all brought all of their things.  
"As you well know by now, you each have a tattoo, stating something we here at WICKED believe to be important to your journey. Some of you have managed to circumvent your tattoos-" A glance at Thomas- "for now. They will not be changing. Consider them an inevitable part of your future and maybe even a determining factor." So they were meant to be predictions, molded into certainty by the WICKED scientists adding yet another burden to their large load. Thomas thought there might be a phrase for that, somewhere, but he couldn't remember it.  
"Enjoy your last meal here in this WICKED facility. We will be shipping you to another one for some more comprehensive testing. There's talk you receiving your memories if you cooperate." So they were leaving. Well, they had all their things; they would be fine, even if they ended up going somewhere other than a WICKED facility. One glance at Minho, squeezing his hand, confirmed he was thinking along the same lines. Maybe they could escape while they were being moved.  
"Thank you for being such considerate.... guests." Thomas tensed. Something was coming... or had already come. He glanced at the platters of food around him. It'd been so rich to hide the taste of drugs. Already, the boys around him were looking tired, out-of-it, and he could feel now that he was thinking through a fog. He'd been so stupid to not think of a trick.

Moving. They were moving. Minho couldn't quite recall why at the moment, focusing more on the motion. It was the only thing he could process. His sight was blocked, his hearing seemed to be obstructed, and the only thing he could feel was cloth around his hands and rope around his wrists. They meant to keep them from escaping. They would arrive and have no idea where they were. Minho had no idea if anyone else was awake, if there was even anyone else with him. He stretched out his legs, quickly hitting bodies. So they were together. If they could get out of the ropes, they might have a chance.  
Someone nudged him back, on his left side. Minho reached out his bound hands and brushed a shirt before hands, also bound, caught his. He felt the ropes tug on his wrists. Minho pulled in the other direction. Maybe they could get the ropes off. Minho relaxed his hands, hoping to gain more slack. Slowly, he and the person tugging the rope got it off. Minho reached for their hands and quickly untied them before working on his blindfold. It was a mask of sorts, and harder to get off than he would have thought. He looked around the room. The Gladers were lined up in rows, all lying down, tied at the wrists and masked. Minho stretched his arms over his head, then glanced to his left. Maybe that was Thomas, but given his first few looks around the room, Thomas was far away. At the moment, he had a bigger problem: Waking up an entire group of drugged and bound teenage boys when he couldn't hear them and they couldn't hear him.  
This was going to be fun.  
Before he could start working on the boy to his right, Minho caught sight of a light sweeping the room. He poked his companion and hurried to wrap his wrists and tug the mask back over his face. Being caught meant being drugged again, and likely taken to a different room. Minho evened out his breathing, keeping his eyes open even under the mask. What little light he could see was enough. When it passed twice, with no pause in its movement, Minho removed the mask and sat back up. He worked faster this time, not as distracted by his surroundings. He loosened the masks but decided against removing them. The Gladers could do that when they woke up. He finished his row, and then started on the row behind him, keeping an eye out for the light. The boy who had helped him was moving in the same way he was. They were toward the back, so it was safer-less chance of getting caught. Minho kept his looking for Thomas, hoping that every brown-haired boy he untied would wake up and be him.  
("It's not a fairytale, Minho," Thomas would say, but he'd listen all the same.)  
When Minho had finished all the rows behind him, and no one had stirred, he knew something more was up than being drugged. Were these boys dummies, made to seem alive? What about the other boy who had woken up? Minho found his way to him. He turned just as Minho approached, and held up a hand in greeting. It was Aris. Together, they worked their way forward, stopping to shake a few boys in each row so they'd have everyone up and moving. Minho kept scanning the faces, now bare, for Thomas, but he wasn't there.  
Something poked him. Hard. Minho looked at the boy at his feet, just awake, and followed his gaze to the light. The news got around quickly, even without speech, and so by the time the light inspected everyone, they all seemed to be knocked out, helpless. They waited for about twenty minutes before getting up and moving again. Half the room was awake now; it wouldn't take long to wake the other half. Minho walked through the rows, making sure everyone was doing okay.  
That was when he saw Thomas.  
Somehow, he'd curled into a ball, hands pulled up to his chest, despite the extra ropes on his legs, holding him to the floor. Maybe because of this, he didn't have a mask. Minho untied him and shook him gently. Thomas shot up, hands flying to touch Minho's face. He brought their foreheads together, and Minho let them stay that way for a few minutes before sliding his hands down Thomas's arms to pull him to his feet. Thomas tapped his ears and shook his head, and Minho nodded back, gesturing to the room at large. Thomas seemed to understand, and they made their way to the center of the room.  
Minho flinched as a boy near him fell, hitting the ground harshly. Minho imagined it would have sounded loud, if he could hear it, and brought whoever held the light running, so he looked around quickly. Nothing was there.  
"So glad to see you're all awake." A dry voice said behind him. "Not quite up to rallying against us, though, are you?" Minho's hands fumbled around his ears; why could he hear now but not before?  
"Line up, please, and allow your tattoos to be scanned. If they suit, you'll be sent to a dorm. If they don't, well... You're smart enough, I'm sure you can figure that out." Minho glanced at Thomas. If by saying 'suit', the man meant 'fulfilled', then Thomas was in danger. He would never leave this room alive if that was the case.  
'They saved him from infection when he was shot.' Minho reminded himself. 'Surely they won't let him die now.' But who would die? Who would WICKED decide to kill over a tattoo? Minho looked over the boys in the room; there were few he didn't know by name, fewer he couldn't recognize the face of and recall some moment, any moment of laughter in the Glade. This was something, he knew, that Thomas didn't know: What it was like to look at the faces of these boys and see within the hardened eyes laughter and joy. For a minute, Minho resented that Thomas would never know the pain of the promised deaths in the way he would.

Thomas leaned up against Minho for as long as he could, looking around him in the line for familiar faces: There was Newt, and Frypan, and Clint, a few others whose names he didn't know. He didn't know most names, actually. When they neared the front, Minho shifted behind him.  
"I'd put myself ahead of you, but I don't think I can stand not knowing your fate again." Minho muttered. Thomas nodded and turned to kiss Minho lightly before stepping backward, baring his tattoo to the scanner. He knew well enough what it said. Thomas looked over the Gladers who had made it this far with him.  
"This way, Subject A2." Someone placed a hand on his shoulder. He was turned away from Minho, led away from the only family he knew. He passed through heavy metal doors.  
"Relax, Thomas, this will only take a minute." A needle dug into his neck, injecting him with chemicals likely to kill him. As he collapsed into several sets of arms, he thought: ‘At least Minho doesn't have to watch me die.’


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the end.  
> the end of everything

The air was light around him, but not especially bright. The walls were dark, painted a rich blue. He wondered for a second if the blue was the sky instead, and there were no walls at all. He couldn’t be sure. He was slow and sleepy, hardly awake at all. He’d been drugged, he thought. Drugged and moved somewhere. But where?  
He found he didn’t have the energy to care much. He vaguely knew that he might be in danger because of this, but still, he didn’t care. He was too relaxed, too spaced out.  
He rolled over—when had he been placed on a bed? He didn’t know. It was soft, softer than he’d felt in years. Where was he again? Was no one coming to wake him, to tell him where he was? To explain everything?  
He sighed and let his eyes slip closed. Something was missing, but he wasn’t sure what. Surely someone would answer all his questions when he woke again.

He woke to a dark room, aware and ready, full of questions. He’d most certainly been drugged, but he’d slept it off, been allowed to sleep it off. Now someone would talk to him. He must still be in a WICKED facility. But he might have been transported while drugged. It hadn’t worked out right last time, so higher doses were a maybe. That’s probably why he’d felt so groggy earlier.   
He had to get up and find out more about where he was. Was anyone with him?  
He didn’t get up.  
He didn’t move at all.  
He didn’t.  
He didn’t.

He did. He woke again and lifted himself from the bed. There was no one in the room. He heard nothing going on outside.  
He grieved.  
For what, he didn’t know.  
The fogginess had returned, a cloud over his mind, his memories, his life. But with it came the urge to move, to find someone and demand answers for why he was here.  
The door was locked.  
He was stuck. Shouting and screaming got him nowhere, and neither did tears.  
But he moved. He tried until he was too tired to try, and then he slept. The fogginess would be gone when he woke. He’d break out of this room and get some answers.

No one knew what to do. The WICKED scientists were at a loss. Their drugs had not worked in the way anticipated. The dorms could not contain the restless teenagers.  
Restless teenagers who had been hardened by trials they put them through.  
Restless teenagers who could fight, rough and untrained, but fight nonetheless.  
Restless teenagers who were well-muscled.  
Restless teenagers who were far stronger than their captors.  
Restless teenagers who wanted to know what had happened to their friends.  
Group A attacked, physically, first, while Group B played coy and fought dirty, learning their way into the systems and hacking every bit of information they could get, hiding away tablets and holograms holding files bearing their names and codes.  
They were restless teenagers, ready to fight, but they were intelligent restless teenagers, sneaky and with no respect for the authority WICKED officials held over them.  
So they won.  
Group B, with the help of a few members of Group A, hacked their way through the entire system.  
They knew everything.  
They locked them in their common areas and figured out where their friends were. One particularly inspired subject, A7, suggested breaking down the doors rather than hack them open.  
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  
The subjects were meant to receive their memories and have the entire project explained to them, offered a safe place to stay and a place to work, if they wanted it.  
They had needed intelligent, strong children for their experiments and it had backfired.  
Those scientists had left for dead? Some would be. Others would be ill beyond belief, ill beyond any reasonable hope of curing.  
They hoped.  
For the ones they had wanted dead were the ones who had been added in as Variables, as a test to the others.  
The subjects unlocked the doors and guided those of their friends who were alive to the infirmary.  
They could not save their friends without help, so they brought the scientists in, under heavy watch.  
The dead were burned.

He woke while being moved. He was being taken from the room. Where to, he did not know.  
“Hush, child.” He had been speaking? He tried to look at the figure holding him. “I am the Grim Reaper. You have been in limbo. Now, your final destination is clear. Rest, child, you have nothing more to fear.”  
He fell asleep, light as a feather.

Surprisingly, almost all of the injected subjects survived. A few, weaker than the others, took much longer to recover. Some were in comas for weeks.  
But they lived, and they were not experimented on, and that was all that mattered to the Groups.  
They should have foreseen this level of loyalty and attachment. Separation after the second trial would have been best.  
They had failed. 

He woke when he had not expected to again, aware of a throbbing headache and needles in his arms.  
“Thomas.” A whisper, somewhere to his left and slightly behind him. “You’re awake. You’re alive.” Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but was stopped by Minho’s voice.  
“We’ve got the WICKED scientists under control, Thomas. We have nothing to fear from them. You’re safe.” He could hear Minho’s smile in his voice.  
It was done.  
They were safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello yet again!  
> Thanks for reading (and hopefully enjoying) this fic!  
> See you tomorrow,  
> Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! I'm back for another year of Thominho Week! I'm going to apologize in advance; some of this week's later fics may not be posted on the right day as I'm still editing them.  
> As always, tell me what you think!  
> Thanks for reading,  
> Phoenix


End file.
